Tape thirty two.

Mikeen McCarthy

Contents

Flowery Nolan

Talk of above song

On nicknames (names Snickles, Sneckles and Slops not for public access)

The Blind Beggar  (5 v/s , last 2 reversed) 

 Maid of Malabar

Description of himself,  "I don't want to hide my identity, now"

List of occupations, “I’m not saying me alone now, every Travelling man had the same occupations as I have”

"Tinware was my father’s occupational his life."

Making tables

Driving horses

Selling halters

Selling holy pictures, “Blessed Martin now, we made a bomb out of that”.

Lace.

Blackberries.

Sweeping chimneys "and we were mad fighting over the price of it."

Cures and secrecy,  "whack" doctors

Travellers as vets, particularly to horses

Horse cured of half-blindness with a grain of sugar

Not passing on the skill till death

“‘Twas herbs that was in the land”.

“They'd put a goat in with the horses”.

Ocedon-ragweed

Uncle who died of going to hospital

J C       When you're ready Michael.

M Mc

Oh he lived upon the Stokestown Road convenient to Arphin,

A man called Flowery Nolan, a terror to all men,

He reached the age of seventy one and he thought himself it was time

For to go and get him a missus and his wedding ‘twould be no crime.

Oh several maids come offer to him end from them all he fled,

Except one young fair maid, her fortune was rather high,

So he took and be married this young fair maid to be his wedded wife.

Oh the wedding it lasted two nights and one day till one night going in to bed

Oh Flowery turned all to his wife and theses are the words he said,

You think you are my wedded wife but I'll tell you you're not,

You are only but a serving maid and better is your lot.

Oh there is two beds in my bedroom and take the one to the right,

For I've lived all alone for seventy one and lie all alone tonight.

When Mrs Nolan heard those words she thought her husband queer’

So packing up her belongings and from him she went away.

So she tramped the road to her mother's house and there she did remain,

And, er....

So she tramped the road to her mother's house and there she did remain,

So all you young pretty fair maids take a warning take by me,

Never marry an old man until you're fed up of your life,

Because you'll be coming home again like Flowery Nolan's wife.

He was an old bachelor, he was, for years and he used be always talking about getting married, but it never, when 'twould be in his mind to get married, he'd never bother about it again, he said he'd wait till next year and next year and it goes on that way till he was seventy one year of age.

So bejay, that farmers around anyway, told him that 'twould be no harm to get a wife, someone to look after him like. So he advertised in the paper anyway, for a wife, so ‘twas more of a joke than anything else with all the lads around the parish of course more blaggarding than anything else that time.   

So bejay, a lot of the girls came around pulling his leg that time, letting on they were going to marry him and all that and bejay, this one meant it.    Out of all her joking ‘tis she got the dirty turn out.

J C      Who made the song, would it be travellers who made the song or would it be settled people?

M Mc   Well Jim, I wouldn't have a clue, because I was only a baby, a young feller when I heard that going on, you know.

JC          Where did you hear it from?

M Mc   Well 'twas a Mayo man we heard it first in Kerry, and then fellers in Kerry started singing it.   And this particular girl, she was a very good singer and she used always sing it.  So she was a child when she started singing it anyway and bejay, she grew with the song, she's the mother of seven or eight or ten children now today, and that's her name ever since she was a baby, Flowery Nolan, it never left her.   Her name is Mary Quilligan but she don't know her name by Mary, only Flowery.    

Big Jimmy Handrigan, Jim Handrigan, Jimmy Handrigan, Paddy Doran, you've four or five different Paddys, Blondie Paddy, there's Curly Paddy Doran.  You go to Ned Cash then, there's Tough Ned Cash and there's Nap Ned Cash, you see, 'tis the only way to distinguish one from the other like. 'Tis like me now, there's so many Michael McCarthy's, there's Big Mikey McCarthy, there's small Mikey Carthy, they call me Mikeen then, that's how they know me, goes on like that, d'you know.

J C     How did they choose a name, how would say Pop's Johnny get his name Pop's.

M Mc    Well his father, that's what they used call him, Old Pop, Old Pop Connors, because he'd one eye...    So I believe there was a picture or something one time, there was a dog in the picture and he'd only one eye, they all went to see it so.    Johnny's father had only one eye like, the name of the dog that was in the picture was Pop and they started calling your man that, so it goes on from that now, Pop’s Johnny, Pop's Jimmy, and the whole lot of them.    Well there was so many Jim Connors then like, again the same thing.   Well he was Mickey Connors, One Eye Mickey they used call him.   So he got the name of Pop Johnny from the films anyway.

J C        How about the women, like Diddles, how would Diddles get her name?

M Mc Well they christens them up like that now.   I've a sister now, she've two daughters, one is Pud.    She was a baby and she was so fat they used call her Pudding, you know1 and bejay, it stuck to her, Pud, she's a married girl now, the mother of a couple of children, her name is still Pud.   She've another daughter then, her name is Bridget and her name is Dol and she's a married girl today.  Well my daughter, Pud now I'm talking about and my eldest girl is the one age, so we used call her Pud, you see, Pudding, with her being so fat.    And my sister call my one Sausage with she being so thin, so Sauce is her name today and it's stuck to her.     There's three sisters now.  

Do you know the old man that was in the pub one night with the lame leg, the old man now?     They're three daughters of his now, there's one married to Paddy Murphy, her name is Snickles. There's another of them married to Johnny Murphy, her name is Sneckles and there's another of them married to Jimmy Handrigan and her name is Slops, Snickles, Sneckles and Slops.

In the valleys in Wales, the Prices, the Isaiah’s we used call them,   I don't know where the got the name of the Isaiah. But all his sons now, one feller Stormy, another feller Sunshine, another feller Rainy Day, and Thundery, the other feller (????),    They wouldn't answer for anything else.  Their age'd be fifty years of age today, forty, they wouldn't answer for anything else.    You'd call them Paddy and Jack, you see, but they wouldn't answer you.

D T    These nicknames in fact carry on don't they?   I mean somebody will end up saying Sneckles' Pud at one point.

M Mc  Oh, they won't answer for anything else, they don't answer for anything else.

D T    You get your father's nickname or your mother's nickname and your own nickname, do you?

M Mc   They gets the name like that when they're babies.

I know a man hers now in England,  Charlie  Gaskell are his name,  he's a Doncaster man himself.   And he had a young feller and he was growing up like and 'twas the last boy they had and they called it Puppy Eyes, he used call it when he were young.   He's about twenty years of age and they still call it Puppy Eyes.    They gets the. christened and they  re-christen them again.  

M Mc

Oh there was a blind beggar1 for a long time was blind,

He          had one only daughter who was handsome and kind,

He had one only daughter and a fair maid was she,

And the name that she went by was Bonny Bessie.

Oh the first came to court her was a rich squire so grand,

He courted lovely Bessie oh then all the night long,

Saying, my land gold and silver I will give to thee,

If you'll tell me your father my bonny Bessie.

Oh the next came to court her was a captain from sea,

He courted lovely Bessie in then every degree,

Saying, my ship gold and silver I will give to thee,

If you'll tell me your father my Bonny Bessie.

Oh my father he’s a blind man that is very well known,

He is led by a dog and a chain and a bell,

He is led by a chain and a bell,

And roll into my arms my Bonny Bessie.

Oh the next came to court her was a merchant so grand,

He courted lovely Bessie then all the night long,

Saying, I'll buy you some fine satins right down to your toes,

And the blind man he leaved down ten times as much more.

That's all I know of it.

M Mc

Come to me my little cooleen1

Come to me my Indian star,

And we both will live together,

Lovely maid of Mellowbar.

It's oftentimes we danced together

In the grand old city hall,

And love songs we sung together,

Lovely maid of Mellowbar.

Oftentimes we danced together,

In the grand old city hall,

And love songs we sung together,

Lovely maid of Mellowbar

.

I'm out of it again.

D T      If somebody you didn't know and you weren't suspicious of, I mean not police or anybody, came up to you and said, who are you, what's your name, where do you live  what do you do, what would you say to them.    Remember, this is somebody you don't know, not us, not police, not somebody who wants something.

M Mc    And you're suspicious?

D T     No, you're not suspicious, what I'm saying is how would you describe yourself to somebody else, what way?

M Mc  I'd say, I don't want to hide my identity now.

D T     No, you want to be honest.

M Mc    I'd tell him my name, Michael McCarthy, what else, he ask me who am I.

D T       Yeah, who are you, where do you live, what do you do?

M Mc   Just a Travelling man, like I tell everybody on the road.   Caravan site, wherever I be, I'd tell them the truth like, like me and my occupation, I'd tell him the truth, I don't be ashamed of anything like that, at scrap and, in fact no matter who's talking to me now in a pub, anywhere like that, they ask me my occupation, some of them like.

There was a feller often talking to me now, we'd say, oh that feller (????) and they'd never know I be a Travelling feller, you know.    And it happened numerous times like, that the conversation would go on about travellers, and I'd never say nothing. ‘twouldn't offend me one bit, what they'd be talking bad about them or good about them.   And I often tried to explain to them that I'd be a Travelling man like, you know, because he'd find it out after and 'twould hurt his feelings, d'you know    But I never gets..... but if ever anybody asks me now, in a pub or anywhere like that, who I am, I never denies nothing, no.

D T    So you’d say it straight out, I'm a Travelling man?

M Mc   Yes, yes, well, 'tis like the coloured man trying to deny his colour, 'tis no good, is it?   I couldn't do it anyway.

D T    What would you say your occupation was?

M Mc   Well, whatever I'd be on at the moment, scrap, tarmac.    'Tis good to tell them your occupation because, you don't know the man you’re talking to, he might say, “I've a load of scrap to give you”.    He could send you on, 'tis kind of a publicity as well as anything else, you're canvassing as well as drinking.   I often got my livings in pubs by telling them the truth.    Horse dealers, well I know fellers selling a horse, I know a feller want to buy a horse, I know a feller have a load of scrap, things like that.   You'd be surprised at the jobs you’d get inside in pubs, 'tis surprised the scrap..... Well if you start telling them that time, a bank clerk from in town or something like that they'd no conversation to talk about like.   I mean, I often see fellers denying their occupation there now and they mightn't have the price of two or three pints in their pocket (laughter).   I tell them my occupation and if I never had a penny in my pocket I could have a few pints for nothing if I hadn't.

D T     Can you just give us... go back as far as you can remember Michael and just give us a straightforward list of all the jobs you can remember doing, all the things you can remember doing to make money.

M Mc  Now I'm not saying me alone like, every Travelling man had the same occupations as I had, any feller.  

We started off selling ballads as I told you, we sweep chimneys, we're chimney sweeps, well,  we'd do that at Christmas 'cause that was the time everybody would clean up the houses like, and that's the time a feller'd be giving you drink money for doing the job as well, like.   

Then we'd go selling holly, did you ever see holly with the red berries?    We'd go selling that for an occupation.    We'd work with farmers, I've worked with farmers, I went cutting turf.    You name it, horse dealing, donkey dealing.  There was times of the year for donkeys, the pulling out of the turf in the fall of the year, that was a good time to sell donkeys,   I'd swap 'em for worn out ones, we'd say.  

Then you'd the Spring of the year then for the old big sized horse, to go dealing him, well, they wanted him for the farm work. You see there's a trick in every trade.  

Well it come on then in the fall of the year and they didn't want to be feeding the big horse because a small pony'd do their job for going to the creamery, you'd have a slap back again. And 'tis with the same man that you'd be after swapping the Summer before like.    You'd have a few marks like that.  I was dealing with the one man for twenty-two years, give him one horse in the month of  March and I come on in September and give him back another one     I mean, no such thing as cheating one another at all.    I wouldn't give him anything dishonest because I'd be losing my trade like.  

But we'd go on then from that and we'd go making tables, chairs, pegs, tinware was my father's occupation all his life.   He'd want to be.... 'twould want to be very bad now.  At the end of the year he'd work harder at tinware because that would be the time it was wanted for the bogs and the farms end all that, you know.    He was the kind of man he'd be missed around the parish if he didn't come back because they'd be... had him for their vessels like, for men working and all that. 

But as I said, tables, chairs, we'd make them out of wood, what they call bog elder (te), and when you peel the skin off' 'twould turn pure red now like, like varnish now.   The elder now, well you wouldn't take all the bark off like, you'd only take the outside bark off, 'twould peel away easy and you'd have the proper colour inside, like an oak stain, the sticks. I often seen people buying them tables and they wouldn't know the wood they'd be made out of, d'you know.   They'd ask you what do you paint them with, and sure, they were already painted when you take off the skin, yeah, it was a couple of old laths that had turned pure red.   We'd cover them then with wallpaper, we'd get the buckie briar then, that's what they call the buckie briar (te), and we'd split it to halves and that'd go all around the head of it, neatly done with a light long dense tack without no head now, you wouldn't even see the head.    And 'twas a skilled job on its own, to get the briar twisted and twisted the way it wouldn't break in the corners.   

Well, what else.  We were in tarpaulin then, selling linoleum for the floors, squares, border squares, all that.    We'd do that around Christmas, coming on the Winter.  

And I droved horses then for years from one fair to the other, riding them all night.  I often had ten horses of my own, twenty maybe, thirty between two of us.    Well, we'd go from one fair to the other then, that'll be always in the Summer time, we'd never do it in the Winter months when the nights are too cold.   We'd leave one town, on to another, that might be twenty five mile. Well we'll have our time cut out, so many hours to make that with all the horses and we'd get in the town maybe the middle of the night.   We'd put away all the horses and we wouldn't get paid for them horses; but we'd have them landed up by their heads the following morning at the fair (???) there is one that time.    And they'd have to be looking well and all that   'Tisn't everbody that'd leave you drove their horses, you know, they'd want to know you very well and knew that you could handle them and not sweat them and all that. But we'd get ten bob a horse and we'd get paid then the very minute we hand them up in the morning.    Well they’d always have to be drink money of course for looking after them, the better you look after them1 the better that your man would deal with you.   

Well then, I was selling halters for going on their heads.   Two men'd be dealing for a horse there now and I’d make the price of the horse there now, I'd divide the last ten pound, do all I could like.    And the halter I'd buy for a half a crown, well, I was going to get a ten bob off your man anyway, and ten bob off the man that sold, that'd be a pound.     I used earn a good living that time, often got ten, twelve, fifteen quid in the fair.   But you wouldn't have a fair every day like.   

Went on from that to what we call selling swag (te), selling camphor balls.

From that up to the holy pictures, Blessed Martin.   There was holy pictures; came out that time like hit records now.  Blessed Martin now, we made a bob out of that and Pope John, all them, you know, Pope Paul.    All those, and Saint Theresa and the Little Flower of.... all that.   We'd buy all those pictures, we'd send direct to Dublin for them.  

We'd sell lace then; and we'd get the lace out of the...  what are they called, where the blind people'd be like, blind asylums and all that.  We'd buy it there very cheap, crochet all that. Well 'tis mostly the women used sell that stuff, but I often, sold it myself.   Sold cotton, sold nylons and now and then getting an odd bit of stuff smuggled over the border, we'd buy it cheap and sell dear (laughter).  

Ah we picked even blackberries for a living, we even picked haws for a living, you know haws?   We picked 'em and sold 'em for a living. 

Working with the farmers in the Summer, saving the hay, all that, milking the cows, I hand milked cows, six o'clock in the morning, maybe five o’clock in the morning, depending how many cattle the man'd have.  

We'd travel on like that, from job to job, you know.   But anything we see coming up we'd have attack it, we’d attack it straight away, whatever it was, and we always seemed to have got the winning side of it but they're very uncertain, them at all, them things, they all kind of died away, well, the tradesman's way of living,  that never died away.    They died away from themselves because they found better ways of living, ah.

D T    What was the worst job you ever did, Michael, the worst thing you ever did that you wouldn't go back to if they.....

M Mc   Sweeping chimneys, you'd have to wash yourself about twenty times a day or else, leave it on you for the week altogether (laughter)    Find a home of your own (laughter).  Jay, I have a cut here on the back of my head what I got from a brick that came down off of a..... inside and hit me, put me unconscious inside on the floor (laughter).   The old woman had all the doctors around me, trying to cure me (laughter).    And we were mad fighting for the price of it, I wanted ten bob and she'll give me six bob and she'd give me no more.    But I attacked her anyway and she. said she'd make me the tea.    Begod, in the wind up anyway, she give me a pound to get out of the house, I've all blood and all, she thought I was dead (laughter).

M Mc  ………..they died, that died with them, they wouldn't tell it to nobody, they were very superstitious

J C        This is cures?

M Mc   Oh yeah, oh yeah, herbs, all that.    No, they wouldn't tell you, they wouldn't leave it out because their belief was if they told you the cure that the skill would leave theirself, which they claim was true, you know.  

We were going through a field one day, myself and a buddy of mine, we used go what they called jobbing that time, fixing buckets and pots and pans and everything that'd be broken in a farm-yard, making lids of churns, if a handle fell off a churn we'd put all the~ things back on, you know.  

But he'd an awful bad pain in the teeth, terrible, he was going mad, and this man was piking dung inside in the yard.

He said, “I pity you, poor man”, he said, and he said, “you're walking on top of a cure now, if you only knew”.    He couldn't tell him, he wouldn't tell him.    Oh yeah, herbs off of the ground. There was fellers could cure, they'd give it to you but they wouldn't tell you what it'd be made out of.  

 Did you ever hear tell of Quack Doctors?  I know them, know they still exist, there's one of them in Newmarket in the County Cork.  I know fellers now leaves Cork city, leaves the end of Kerry, leaves Dublin, all over, where there are all qualified doctors all over the country and they land back in Newmarket. And while they be saying quack to a duck their disc is in, or their hand, their fingers, anything like that.   Oh, like a bullet, just one tip only.   

Dogs, you bring him on a dog there, his shoulder'd be out, horse, anything like that. He just measure them up there, and his brother's the same, and they're back like that.   'Tis valuable race dogs and all like that now, that have put out their knuckles and all that now, you know     And he wouldn't take no money, if you offered him money, if you only offered it him you can't bring a dog there no more or go yourself either.   Not even offer him money, yeah, couldn't have it.   Well, if a feller feel like sending a bottle of whiskey for the Christmas or something like that like, it's up to himself.   They exist.

The Travelling people was the same, they had their own skills. they were the highest skilled horsemen I ever see anyway.  They were away ahead of those qualified vets.   I often saw vets asking their opinions about horses.   I'm qualified myself over horses like, I know an awful lot.   But there was men that could teach me, well, 'twas those men that did teach me but I didn't learn half enough.   Well they died. They had cures with horses and they went to the grave with them, they wouldn't tell it to nobody.    Well, they were the smartest men I ever see.    They used go into fairs there now, you'd see big farmers going over asking to buy a horse for them and they'd take their opinion before they'd take the vet of the town.  

 I saw an awful dispute on one day.    This man got a vet to test his horse for him and there was an old Travelling man, he's dead since, God have mercy on him, old Danny Sheridan.    That was his occupation, he’d stand on the fair in the morning and if you wanted to buy a horse you'd just tell him.   He'd say,' what size of a horse.  An honest horse.  Well, he wouldn't leave you down 'cause that was his occupation, he couldn't.   He'd bring on the horse and he'd tell you anyway, faults that wou1d be in him, he'd say, but 'twould be no harm, whatever faults is no harm to you, and he'd tell all the faults.    And I saw this man sending for a vet one day and' he said that horse is what they call half blind (te) d'you know.   Well that'd be a cloud like, that’d be over their eyes.   The vet said anyway, he came on; he shook his handkerchief like that over the horse, that's the way they had of testing them like.  

“He's half blind, he's half blind now”, said Danny Sheridan, “but I'll bet you in ten minutes”, he said, “he wouldn't be half blind”, he said.  

He said, “that horse will never again see the way he should”.   

He went into the shop and he got a grain of sugar there into, his hand and he broke it up inside in his hand into small pieces and blew it into the horses eyes like that and that broke the scum of the eyes.   Horse was perfect.

“Ah”, he said, “that horse was kept in a dark stables”, said he, he said to the men that owned him, “is that right”?  

“That's right”, he said.   He knew what happened the horse.

J C     You know you say that if a man that can cure tells somebody else the cure, he loses the skill?

M Mc   That’s what they used say.

J C        What happens to the skill, do you know?

M Mc    It dies with him that goes to the grave with him.

J C         But if he loses the skill by telling somebody, what happens to the skill?

M Mc    Well I never heard tell of anybody losing it like, Jim, because I never heard tell of anybody telling it in the first place.   Any fellers that knew it, they got it from their mother or their father died before them and they was probably on the way out when they passed it on to the son.   Maybe the son would be all his life asking his mother what was it, maybe it would be when the mother was dying in bed that she'd tell him.   

The father was the same because she'd have to cure her family, whatever was wrong there was no doctor available at that time, she depended on that.   If she told it to one of her sons or her daughters while they be growing up maybe 'twould leave her.   Some kind of a power they put into the....

'Twas herbs that was in the land.  There was the Ocedon now, that was the thing that would.... I suppose you never heard tell of the Ocedon, they call it the ragweed, that's a bog flower and there’s all little yellow buds grows over it.    Well a horse would never eat it,    If a cow saw it in a field she'd keep bellowing, roaring, d'you know.   But the horse, now,  the horse would pick it up, he'd be eating the grass around it and a piece would get mixed up with the grass, d'you know, rotted away like.    And that little yellow flower would get into the horse and 'twould burn holes in and out through his liver, and there wasn't a vet in the world that could cure him and he'd be dead in twenty one days, twenty one days1 down he'd go.   'Tould keep boring holes in and out through the liver.  

Well they found a cure for that, they'd put a goat in with the horses or cattle, wherever 'twould be, and wherever the goat would be, the goat would eat it.   Well, there's no weed wou1d kill a goat like, and anything the goat eat won't grow no more for a year.    Well, that was the only cure they found for that anyway.    There wasn't any scientist going that time, but by jakers, they knew their stuff.  (laughter)

J C        I've never heard that at all.

M Mc  Oh, that's true there.

J C       There's a couple of things I've never heard there before. (laughter).

M Mc  0h, the Ocedon still exists like, but they know more about it now.

D T      What's it called Michael?

M Mc  They used call it the ragweed, was one1 and more of them'd call it the Ocedon, more of them would call it the yellow flower, there was so many names for it like.

J C       Ocedon?

M Mc  The Ocedon.   But then you'd ask another man and he'd say it was the yellow flower that killed them, then another man would say.... a lot of horses died with it like.   But you'd easy know the horse that'd get it.   When you give him water, he'd be drinking water every time you bring him to give him water he'd drinking it.   And he'd start bellowing then like, always short,   He'd be grand when you get up in the morning like, he could be fine again, that evening you'd see him going for the water, that's the way he would keep going and keep going till he die.   But more of them call it the ragweed then.    You wouldn1t hear tell of it at all now, but the finest of horses went down with it.    But 'twas the only cure I ever heard; nobody could cure, no vets, no nothing at all could cure it.

J C     Are there people now that you would go to, that travellers would go to if they were ill, end say, can you give me a cure for it, toothache, whatever ?

M Mc  Not these days Jim, because you've too many dentists and doctors, all this, around the corner, go into the chemist, like that.   Them times, I remember my father would say, for instance, or my mother, they ask him to take aspirins now, or Anadins, they'd d first before they'd take them, they didn't believe in them, you see, they wouldn't take them and that was that.   And if they took them like, they'd look at them like but they wouldn't take them, just couldn't do it, whatever's wrong.  

I had an uncle and he went to hospital for the first time ever when he was seventy one end he'd a set of teeth and they were like ivory because he never drank  nothing only goat's milk, never drank tea, he said 'twould rot their teeth away.    He'd claim that tea rot his teeth and he'd tell all of us not to be drinking too much tea.   But he'd a set of teeth and they were like a young boy of twenty years when he died.   And whatever bad pain he got anyway, he went into hospital and when he went in, when the nurse was going to change his sheets, he wouldn't have it; he couldn't understand it like.   They claim that it was broken hearted he died in hospital1 that 'twasn1t disease at all killed him.   When the nurses come around he'd cover his head with a sheet and all that, you know.  Big healthy strong man.   Well, they claim that he died broken hearted when he found that he'd to go to hospital.